Review: ABC's 'Pan Am' has a promising maiden flight

Every TV season brings with it a pair of somehow unrelated twins: shows developed at different networks, by different people, that are remarkably similar in subject matter and/or style, no matter how weirdly specific those things get. One year, the twins may be hospital dramas set in Chicago; another, it may be middle-aged men traveling back in time to relive their adolescence. Don't ask how/why this happens. It just does, always and always and always, and this year's unlikely twins are a pair of dramas set in the "Mad Men" era about women who have jobs that seemed glamorous at the time, that have seemed more demeaning through a modern lens, but are now the subject of shows that argue for them being liberating.

The first of those was NBC's "The Playboy Club," which debuted Monday night, was both terrible and terribly unconvincing in its feminist arguments, and which bombed royally. (Not that anyone should be shocked; the ratings "Mad Men" gets on AMC would get it canceled in a heartbeat by a network.) The second is ABC's "Pan Am," which debuts Sunday night at 10. It may not do any better commercially than "Playboy," but it's both a much better show and makes a much better case for women's lib.

On the latter, it helps that the women are, in fact, the center of the show, where "The Playboy Club" quickly turned into the "Let's Talk About Eddie Cibrian Hour." Our four main characters are a quartet of Pan Am stewardesses on a new trans-continental flight in 1963.(*) Christina Ricci is Maggie, a beatnik who tells her establishment-hating roommates that she keeps the job because "I get to see the world." Kelli Garner and Margot Robbie are Kate and Laura, sisters with a mild rivalry, but close enough that Kate helped Laura run away from her own wedding to join the Jet Age. And Karine Vanasse is Colette, a French woman who enjoys the chance to have a new man in every port.

(*) Bet the house on there being a JFK assassination episode during November sweeps.

There are a couple of men in the cockpit, of course - earnest rookie captain Dean (Mike Vogel) and chauvinist co-pilot Ted (Michael Mosley) - but the show is very clearly about the women, and the challenges and freedoms that come with wearing the famous sky blue uniform. They have to endure periodic weigh-ins and girdle checks and lose their jobs if they get engaged, but they also get to travel the globe and meet interesting people and do interesting things, back in a time period when air travel was glamorous and fun rather than the inhuman slog it is today.(**)

(**) To an audience below a certain age (say, if you were born after 1980), that aspect of the show is almost going to seem like science fiction.

Though Ted is portrayed as a dog who'd gladly go to bed with any stewardess who would let him, he's also somewhat in awe of them, at one point comparing them to the first man to crawl out of the primordial ooze.

"See that table over there?" he tells Dean. "That is natural selection at work, my friend. They don't know that they're a new breed of woman. They just had an impulse to take flight."

(Unsurprisingly, the more colorful role helps Mosley - the best part of that strange final season-spin-off of "Scrubs" - make a greater impression than Vogel does as the generic good guy.)

As with "Playboy Club," "Pan Am" has an impressive central set in the large recreation of the cabin of a Pan Am Clipper jet of the era, and smooth, engaging direction from "West Wing"/"Sports Night" veteran Tommy Schlamme. (One of the best directors in TV history at taking full advantage of a physical space.) The script, by "ER" veteran Jack Orman, is less memorable, but it has to work in backstories for the four stewardesses and Dean, introduce a few notable passengers on the plane's maiden voyage from New York to London, and weave in an extra layer of drama by revealing that Kate moonlights as a spy for our side of the Cold War, keeping her eyes peeled for shady characters in foreign lands and occasionally having to lift something from a passenger's briefcase.

BBC America's "The Hour" - yet another recent drama set near the "Mad Men" era - also had an unexpected espionage element, and one that the show ultimately didn't do a great job of justifying. On the other hand, a TV news program during a tumultuous political era seems a more fertile ground for drama than the passenger cabin of a Pan Am jet, and "Pan Am" may need the spy angle more. And at least in the pilot, it puts the spotlight squarely on Kelli Garner (the highlight of ABC's largely-woeful "My Generation" last fall), who seems more than capable of being the star.

(Although, interestingly, the pilot's structure gives Christina Ricci, the cast's biggest name by a mile, the least to do of any of the stewardesses. I don't expect that to continue, as she didn't come to network TV to play fourth banana.)

Like most of the season's rookies, the "Pan Am" pilot doesn't give an incredible sense of what the series may be like on a weekly basis. The episode is almost structured like the "Lost" pilot, with flashbacks to how most of the main characters wound up on this crew, dealing with these situations. Orman has said the flashbacks will be an ongoing element, but used variably based on the needs of the plot. In the pilot, at least, the number and length of them suggests there's not enough drama in the flight itself.

But the female leads are appealing, the world promising and the pilot much more clear-eyed and less compromised in its view of the era than "Playboy Club" is. "Pan Am" may never soar to the creative heights of a "Mad Men," but it's not a bad start.

Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

Not surprised. If anyone has access to the New Yorker archives on-line, Tad Friend's piece on David Lynch and the production of the 'Mulholland Drive' pilot - and the increasingly bizarre notes Lynch got from ABC - is fascinatingly dreadful. Apparently, you can shoot a woman in the ass (you had to be there) but smoking? No way.

Alan - could the lack of anything for Ricci to do be a factor that she is already famous and pretty recognizable so the writers/producers chose to focus less on establishing her because viewers will already have a baseline connection to that character based on familiarity with Ricci?

Like little Eugene Draper, I was born in 1963 and took my first flight at age 3 weeks, and because of my dad's job, flew a lot as a little girl. I *loved* air travel. I loved the formal ritual of getting dressed up, meeting the stewardesses who always had a smile on their faces and would take you up to see the cockpit and give you wings. The hot meals were served with cloth napkins and actual silverware. It was quite an adventure. Of course, planes were always smokey back then, but we didn't know any different. There were always enough blankets, pillows, headsets for everyone, the movie was a big deal.

Times have indeed changed. I absolutely loathe air travel now and avoid as much as I can.

I look forward to Pan Am for the nostalgia as much as anything else. I probably don't have any Pan Am bags anymore, but I'm certain I used to. My dad kept a whole cache of airline bags that are now lost to time.

I was born a little bit before you (not much) but never - our family couldn't afford to fly (I have the weirdest memory of my father meaning to take us all to Canada to buy a Volkswagon But but my being too scared to fly, so he flew. Seriously. It makes no sense. He flew alone would make sense. But in my head, the story is that cause I put up such a fuss, he flew (I was probably about 6)

PAMELAJAYE, I have a similar background. I remember People Express well. They didn't feed you, but you could buy a snack pack for something like $1.99. It had cheese and crackers, cookies etc. The coolest thing to me was paying for your trip after you got on the plane.

I do remember flying in that era. I look forward to seeing how mich they are going to make me weep with fond memories as I prepare for my upcoming cattle call flight to Rome in a few weeks with the choice of creepy person patting me down or getting zapped by radiation. Decisions, decisions.

As a little girl I thought the stewardesses were all so beautiful and perfect. Didn't know the gory details about the weight restrictions and not being able to be married. Not until I was older and by then I was a full blown "hippie" who found them harmful to the cause. But I always thought they looked fab.

One of the things that has driven me mad with the publicity/discussion of both this and the Playboy Club is a simple "it was liberating/it was demeaning" dichotomy. One of the things Mad Men manages to do well is explore contradictions - Joan and Peggy have very different experiences of empowerment and feminism, for example, and the show never invalidates either. If the show is really going to explore what world "stews" lived in, it'll involve sexism and freedom, and maybe at the same time. (It'd be fascinating if they deal with male flight attendants as well - Pan Am was successfully sued in the 1960s for refusing to hire men, a policy that dated from around 1960. But it always had some, hired before the freeze right through to when it was lifted).

What I'd love -- LOVE -- is for PAN AM to cover that dirty little Juan Trippe secret -- that he backed cheap travel from Puerto Rico and other islands as a source of cheap domestic labor, now that those Negroes were getting so uppity... but *that's* a story not glamorous enough to cover....

No, the pilot showed several castmembers (Jack, Kate and Charlie, at least) on the plane before the crash. The second episode is when we switched to the more familiar structure of focusing on a specific character and his/her backstory.

I have been a flight attendant for four years and am one of those born after 1980. While traveling isn't as glamorous as it used to be, it is mostly because the traveling public treat it as a bus system and only want to pay cheap fares. It isn't just that, though..... Society isn't glamorous anymore. Women rarely put time into doing their makeup, hair, etc. (Except for places in the South). They throw on jeans and through their hair into a ponytail. Manners and courtesy have gone out the window, due to the baby boomers and the new "x" and "me" generations. Is my job difficult at times? Sure. Is it the same as theirs was? No, and it never will be. But, I still believe I live a glamorous lifestyle, and one that many of my friends and family members envy.

I agree with you but I fly all the time for work and it makes little sense to put lots of time into dressing when you have undress going through security. Belts, necklaces, hair clasps, cardigans, shoes, it all has to come off. Then you're supposed to quickly dress in front of everyone while simultaneously grabbing your laptop and putting it back in the case while not forgetting your ID and bag. You may leave home/hotel looking nice, but security will ruin it, leaving you crumpled and dispirited.

And no shoes that require sitting down, to take off; no metal accessories that can't be taken off or tracked in bins. No up-dos, 'cause those use bobby pins that trigger a special TSA patdown; and don't blame cheap fares on passengers -- the deluxurization of air travel went hand-in-hand with deregulation and deunionization (why pay for expensive workers, who care about quality?).

Cheap fares were the carrot to get the public to accept lower-quality service, and considering the stagnant wages that began in the 70s and the hollowing out of American business, it's not surprising customers took what bargains they could.

Besides, the real glamour's in private jet travel, with no riff-raff allowed.

With all due respect, the friendliness of flight attendants is so much lower than twenty years ago. What that is due to, I don't know for sure, but it doesn't make the miserable experience of flying any better when flight attendants treat you indifferently at best and flat out rudely at worst.

Maybe passengers don't value air travel because of lower fares and that accounts for some of the bad behavior.

However, as the crew on Sully's river landing showed, flight attendants provide very valuable safety services and can actually save lives because of their training and grace under pressure.

I wonder if 'Pan Am' will get into any of these issues as it progresses through time.

we have 4 (5?) womenOne seems to sleep aroundOne has a mysterious plotline (she's a spy)Another has a seriously mysterious plotline (she's not dead)and the rest? Not sure.But I'll watch it. Don't know whether I even recorded The Playboy Club. Guessing no, due to the word "mysterious" in the show description.

The Pan Am pilot was very North by Northwest pretty, but I have a hard time believing they'll be able to sustain that look forever. Nonetheless, potential exists so I will watch just to see which direction the story takes.

Alan: It may be more accurate to state "Kate moonlights as a spy for what seems to be our side of the Cold War," In that era, would she have investigated her handlers' claims? And the fingerprint wiping by the Brit spy seemed to be a tip off.

I liked it quite a bit; more than The Playboy Club that's for sure. One small quibble, but it really bugged me, the song at the end, 'Mack the Knife,' was from the 50s and didn't really fit and I found it detrimental to the story. It fit the vibe but not the time. I wonder why they couldn't find a song from 1963 that would have accomplished the same mood/vibe.

Great review. I loved this Pilot. The mixing of 60s sensibilities and screwball comedy style and optimism and glamrou with modern production values and irony was great. The opening sequence was stunning. Hope they toss in some smoking.